Eric Holder has been on a racialist bender the last few weeks.  Last week, he said his skin color is responsible for the fury of criticism over his Justice Department allowing thousands of guns to flood Mexico.  Friday, he blocked South Carolina from implementing a voter ID law under the Voting Rights Act saying it was racially discriminatory.

Sixteen states, including South Carolina, must submit all election law changes to the United States Justice Department for approval.  States also have the option of bypassing DOJ and going straight to court for approval, an option they should readily choose.  This law, unlike so many federal laws, actually has a legitimate Constitutional basis – the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which bars racial discrimination in voting.  Passed in 1965, it was designed to prevent states from drifting toward renewed discrimination.  It is now being challenged as unconstitutionally outdated by Arizona and Shelby County (AL) in federal court.

Eric Holder’s Voting Section, where I used to work, interposed an objection late in the day today.  These Christmas Eve gifts are becoming tiresome.  In 2009 it was Obamacare.  Today, it was blocking Voter ID.

In the objection letter, DOJ said that South Carolina did not meet its burden to prove that photo identification laws did not have any discriminatory effect.  Notice the word “any,” more on that later.  The data show, according to DOJ, that 1.6 percentage points more voting blacks don’t have a driver’s license than whites.  Roughly 10 percent of blacks registered to vote don’t have a photo ID, and 8.6 percent of whites don’t.  That represents a “discriminatory effect” under the statute.

There are several problems with the objection.  But some law first:

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Against the expressed wishes of Obama White House lawyers, the United States Supreme Court has agreed to resolve the Obama Department of Justice’s lawsuit against the State of Arizona over its get-tough illegal immigration law (SB 1070). The decision comes just weeks after the High Court announced it would take on a lawsuit over the constitutionality of Obamacare, setting the stage for two extremely contentious legal battles in the middle of a heated presidential election year.

According to Bloomberg:

The U.S. Supreme Court said it will consider reviving the trailblazing Arizona law that would use local police and prosecutors to crack down on illegal immigration.

Already set to rule on President Barack Obama’s health-care law by the middle of next year, the justices today added another high-profile case that has implications for similar laws around the country and for the 2012 elections.

On April 11, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld an injunction against the enforcement of some of the law’s provisions, prompting the State of Arizona to petition the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case.

Back in September, Judicial Watch filed an amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief with the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of our client, the Arizona State Legislature, which is now a defendant in the lawsuit in support of the Supreme Court petition. And as I said in a press statement at the time, “We hope the Supreme Court accepts the State of Arizona’s petition, protects the rule of law and upholds the rights of the States to protect its citizens.”

Well, we’re one step closer. (more…)

From AFP:

The US Supreme Court on Monday agreed to review a controversial immigration law which has been challenged by President Barack Obama’s administration.

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From CBSNews:

Documents obtained by CBS News show that the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) discussed using their covert operation “Fast and Furious” to argue for controversial new rules about gun sales.

In Fast and Furious, ATF secretly encouraged gun dealers to sell to suspected traffickers for Mexican drug cartels to go after the “big fish.” But ATF whistleblowers told CBS News and Congress it was a dangerous practice called “gunwalking,” and it put thousands of weapons on the street. Many were used in violent crimes in Mexico. Two were found at the murder scene of a U.S. Border Patrol agent.

ATF officials didn’t intend to publicly disclose their own role in letting Mexican cartels obtain the weapons, but emails show they discussed using the sales, including sales encouraged by ATF, to justify a new gun regulation called “Demand Letter 3″. That would require some U.S. gun shops to report the sale of multiple rifles or “long guns.” Demand Letter 3 was so named because it would be the third ATF program demanding gun dealers report tracing information.

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The illegal immigration debate could not be any hotter. While JW was protecting the rights of Maryland citizens to stop tuition breaks for illegal aliens in Maryland, on October 14, a federal court blocked provisions of Alabama’s new tough illegal immigration enforcement law from taking effect — at the urging of the Obama Department of Justice (DOJ) — while allowing other provisions to be enforced. At the same time, Arizona’s illegal immigration enforcement law, SB 1070, is expected to go before the U.S. Supreme Court soon (Judicial Watch currently represents the Arizona State Legislature in court and recently filed an amicus curiae brief with the High Court, which began its current term on October 3).

In the midst of this firestorm, Judicial Watch took aggressive action, launching a national television advertising campaign to combat illegal immigration. The purpose of the campaign is to collect petitions from the American people to send to the governors of all 50 states, urging them to obey and enforce all laws against illegal immigration. This campaign to encourage our nation’s governors to stand strong on illegal immigration law enforcement has become more urgent now that the Obama DOJ has decided to sue states for merely trying to protect their citizens from the scourge of illegal immigration.

But it’s not just the federal government that is to blame. Some states have decided to side with the illegal aliens, rolling out the welcome mat for illegal aliens through costly and unlawful sanctuary policies. That’s why we’re going national with this petition campaign. The petition campaign is being driven by a series of television advertisements that began broadcasting this week in California, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas, as well as nationwide on Fox Business News (FBN) and the Military Channel.

In this new national campaign, Judicial Watch asks Americans take a stand on this illegal immigration crisis:

The cost of illegal immigration is a burden on every taxpaying citizen. That’s why Judicial Watch fights hard to hold politicians accountable when they violate and undermine immigration law. Take a stand. Sign this petition and tell your state governor to enforce our federal immigration laws.

The objective of our television campaign is to educate the public and encourage citizens to petition their government in support of the rule of law. Here’s what our petition states (If you’d like to sign off on these principles, then please click here and join our cause!):

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It’s just a piece of cotton thread.

And yet, in order to use that simple piece of thread in Arizona for the popular practice of removing unwanted facial hair, the state’s Board of Cosmetology demanded that highly skilled entrepreneurs sit through 600 hours of classroom instruction—with a price tag of up to $10,000.

And here’s the kicker:  not one hour of instruction teaches anything about threading:

Thankfully, five Arizona threading entrepreneurs teamed up with the Institute for Justice and fought back. And this week, they proved that you can stand up to government officials to defend your civil rights—and win.

As Institute for Justice Arizona Chapter Executive Director Tim Keller explains in the video above:

Threading is such a safe and sanitary practice that Arizona’s neighboring states – California, Utah and Nevada – have all exempted braiders from their states cosmetology licensing schemes.   Our goal is to restore the right to earn an honest living to its proper role as a fundamental right in Arizona.

And so last June, the entrepreneurs and IJ filed a lawsuit challenging the Board’s requirement that Arizona threaders first obtain a cosmetology license in order to use a single piece of cotton thread to remove facial hair.  And now those same entrepreneurs have joined the Arizona Attorney General’s Office in asking a Superior Court judge to sign a Consent Judgment that will end the litigation and prevent the Board from requiring threaders to become licensed cosmetologists.

Once the Consent Judgment is signed, every threader in Arizona will be able to work without fear of citations, fines or harassment from the Board.

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Taxpayers across the nation are spending millions of dollars to pay the salaries and benefits of government employees to work exclusively for labor unions, an investigation by the Arizona-based Goldwater Institute has found.

The practice is called “official time” in federal law, or “release” time in local labor agreements reviewed by the Institute. At the federal level, it cost taxpayers more than $129 million in 2009, the last year for which figures are available, according to a report from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

Similar provisions have become standard in labor agreements between unions and governments at the state and local level. Finding the total cost would require analyzing every government union contract in every state, county, city and school district in the country, a monumental task that those who have studied the issue say has not been done.

But one example exposed by the Goldwater Institute’s investigation shows the City of Phoenix spent about $3.7 million to pay its employees to do union work last fiscal year, which ended in June. Phoenix has agreements with seven unions that represent city employees, allowing them a total of more than 73,000 city-paid hours annually to do union work.

Other cities in the area have similar provisions in their contracts with labor organizations that represent municipal employees.

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Judicial Watch Director of Litigation Paul Orfanedes, along with Judicial Watch attorney Julie Axelrod, appeared before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans last Wednesday on behalf Houston police sergeant Joslyn M. Johnson.

Houston, Texas, as you may recall, is a sanctuary city. And here’s the principal argument our client is trying to make in court, as described in our original complaint:

Sergeant Johnson challenges current policies, practices, and procedures of the Houston Police Department that substantially restrict, if not prohibit, Plaintiff from communicating with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) about illegal aliens who are criminally present in the United States.

Plaintiff does not seek to detain or arrest persons in order to inquire about their immigration status. Rather, Plaintiffs seeks to use her professional judgment to determine when it is appropriate to contact ICE to inquire or provide information about a person’s immigration status if, in the course of carrying out her duties and responsibilities as a law enforcement officer, she has reason to believe a crime may have been committed.

Now I say Mrs. Johnson is “trying” to make these arguments because the lower court dismissed the lawsuit before the merits of the case could even be considered. (For more information on the “reason” for this dismissal, please read our latest court filing in the case.)

If Judicial Watch is successful at the appellate court level, the lawsuit would be remanded to the district court level again where Sgt. Johnson could make her case.

This sanctuary policy issue personally affects Sgt. Johnson. Not only because she serves in the Houston Police Department and sees the potential dangers of allowing illegal alien criminals to roam free, but because Mrs. Johnson is also the widow of former Houston police officer Rodney Johnson, who was murdered by an illegal alien during a routine traffic stop on September 21, 2006.

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By way of law and order and in an effort to protect its citizenry, the state of Georgia has enacted an anti-illegal immigration law similar to SB 1070 proposed by the state of Arizona.

Georgia’s measure seeks to “empower police to investigate the immigration status of certain suspects… punishes people who transport or harbor illegal immigrants in Georgia or use fake identification to get a job.”  The law also “requires many businesses to use the federal E-Verify program to ensure their newly hired workers are eligible to work in the United States.”

It wasn’t long ago that Barack Obama complained about the state of Arizona passing a similar illegal immigration law.  At the time, the President claimed that Arizona’s effort to control illegal immigration abused individuals by unfairly asking for identification even from parents taking children out for an ice cream cone. The president warned:

“If you [don’t] have your papers and you [take] your kids out for ice cream, you could be harassed.”

Despite the deaths of innocent citizens at the hands of marauding interlopers toting guns, not double-scoop ice cream cones, and in an effort to protect aficionados of frozen creamery from undue persecution, the Obama Justice Department filed a federal lawsuit against the Arizona immigration law.

Therefore, it was not surprising when the “Anti-Defamation League” together with “Mexico and the governments of several Central and South American countries filed court papers…in support of efforts to halt Georgia’s tough new immigration enforcement law.”

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Palin spokesman Tim Crawford says the tour will hit “historical sites that were key to the formation, survival, and growth of the United States of America.”

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) – Sarah Palin is embarking on an East Coast tour this weekend, hitting historical sites that her political action committee calls key to the country’s formation, survival, and growth.

Limited details of Palin’s “One Nation” tour were released on the website of SarahPAC. The tour is beginning in Washington, D.C., and moving up the East Coast.

The tour comes as speculation mounts that Palin will enter the Republican presidential race.

She has authorized a feature-length film about her career, added staff and said she has “that fire in the belly” for a presidential bid. (more…)

On April 1, Judicial Watch will represent the Arizona State Legislature in court, defending SB 1070, Arizona’s get-tough illegal immigration law, against the Obama administration’s all-out legal assault.

The Arizona Legislature has every right to defend its law, but the Obama administration is trying to block it from joining the lawsuit.

As noted by The Associated Press: “A federal judge set an April 1 hearing for arguments over the Arizona Legislature’s request to become a party in the U.S. Justice Department’s challenge to the state’s immigration enforcement law. The Legislature argues that lawmakers should be allowed to help defend the law and cite a new law that lets legislative leaders participate in efforts to defend the enforcement law against challenges.”

As I told you last month, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed “emergency legislation” on February 7, 2011, paving the way for the Arizona legislature’s intervention. And we filed a “Motion to Intervene” on February 11, 2011.

However, as noted in our recent response to the court filed on March 7, the Obama administration is doing everything in its power to keep the Arizona Legislature out of the lawsuit by raising “a host of meritless objections:”

[The Obama administration] makes the patronizing suggestion that if the Legislature happens to have “arguments that it wishes to advance, it should do so through defendants” or simply as an amicus. It is undeniable that the State of Arizona has now unequivocally indicated how it wishes to be sued in this case. It is not the proper role of the United States to try to dictate how Arizona presents its defense. Arizona is entitled to defend itself in the manner it sees fit. With the permission of this Court, it should be allowed to do so.

In recent installments of the Weekly Update, I’ve put the spotlight on the Obama administration’s abysmal record on illegal immigration.

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As you no doubt recall, the Obama administration has sued the State of Arizona over its get-tough illegal immigration law, S.B. 1070. Judicial Watch has been representing Arizona State Senate President Russell Pearce in court against this shameless legal assault. Recently we added a new client: The Arizona State Legislature.

On Friday, February 11, 2011, we filed a “Motion to Intervene” on behalf of the Arizona State Legislature in the Obama Justice Department lawsuit against the state of Arizona. Governor Jan Brewer paved the way for this intervention when she signed emergency legislation on February 7, 2011, authorizing the Arizona Legislature to retain counsel to help defend S.B. 1070.

Here’s a squib from our motion:

Under a newly enacted Arizona law, the Legislature has been authorized to defend S.B. 1070….Through this Motion, the Legislature now seeks permission to intervene as a defendant (joining the State of Arizona and Governor Brewer) for the purpose of defending its enactment, S.B. 1070, and the interests of the people of Arizona.

In the motion, the Legislature argued that it “has a paramount interest in seeing that [the law’s] enactment is upheld.”

In addition to the “Motion to Intervene,” Judicial Watch also filed a “Proposed Answer in Intervention” on behalf of the Arizona Legislature. The court filing counters the allegations proffered by the Obama Justice Department in its complaint challenging S.B. 1070. Among the Arizona Legislature’s key arguments:

• [The Arizona Legislature] has a right to protect its citizens.

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Judicial Watch recently received documents from the Department of Justice that confirmed our suspicions: the  DOJ has been working hand-in-hand with the radical leftist American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in mounting their respective legal challenges to the Arizona’s get-tough anti-illegal immigration law SB 1070.

These documents, obtained through a June 17, 2010, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, include email exchanges between DOJ officials and ACLU staff. And I think when you read them for yourself you’ll see how difficult it is to tell where the ACLU ends and the DOJ begins.

For example, check out this July 27, 2010, email exchange between Lucas Guttentag, leader of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project and the DOJ’s Deputy Solicitor General Edwin Kneedler:

2:15 pm: Ed

I left a voicemail earlier today about checking in once the district court rules. Would you be available then?

[Redacted statement] And from all of us, thank you again for your argument on behalf of the United States.

Lucas

2:40 pm: Thanks Lucas. We should definitely check in once we hear. We’ll be huddling here as soon as we can. What is your thinking at this point on if/how you will proceed in various possible scenarios?

It was good to see you, even if only briefly, and to be on the same side for once! [Redacted statement] I have a feeling we might be seeing each other again on this case.

Ed

6:14 pm: Thanks Ed. Yes, a real pleasure to be on the same side.
I think we will be strongly inclined to seek an immediate emergency injunction from the 9th Circuit…

Can you share your current thinking with regard to the various scenarios?

Best Lucas

I am sure you share my concerns about the nation’s highest law enforcement agency being “on the same side” as the ACLU.

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Samuel Adams, writing in a letter to James Warren in February of 1779, said, “If virtue and knowledge are diffused among the people, they will never be enslaved.” Our nation needs to heed these words and continue to remain informed and engaged. The tragedy of the Arizona shootings by a sick human being has provided Mr. Obama and his supporters a wall shielding the past two years of abusing power and ignoring the will of the people.  A call for civil discourse is no more than code for “moving on” and not challenging the bad legislation that was forced on the American people by single party rule. The people must recognize this and keep the 112^th Congress focused on repealing legislation that threatens our liberty, regardless of how civil the discourse.

Obama Care is more than another expensive entitlement program that will bankrupt our nation and put future generations under heavy financial risk, it changes the fundamental view of the role of government in the lives of the American people.  This legislation places the most private aspects of a citizen’s life and liberty into the hands of the government.  The over reach of the law is far more that its constitutionally challenging provisions for forced purchases of insurance and potential for rationing, it legislates a dominant position for a central authority over the well- being and eventually the actual existence of the individual.

There was no civil discourse when this law was being debated.  Mr. Obama himself, in referring to the outcry of the American people at town hall meetings with their elected representatives during the summer of 2009, said. “The people should just shut up!” Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic Speaker of the House during the debate, proclaimed, “We have to pass the bill to see what’s in it.” The American people were called “Nazis” and “dangerous” and worse.  All the American people were doing was simply demanding that their government follow their will. The people were ignored. Now, those who committed the atrocity want us to forget what happened and simply move on all in the name of civil discourse in honor of those slain by a criminally insane individual.

The only way to properly honor the victims of the Arizona shooting is to do what they were doing at the time of that terrible event – engage in the political process and demand that our elected representatives understand what the people want and to legislate based on that understanding.

Repealing Obama Care and replacing it with free market solutions to lowering the costs of health insurance is only one legislative correction necessary.  Focusing on the run away authority of unelected agency heads and commission members, as well as the unconstitutional regulations they have been writing for the past two years is also a necessary corrective step for the 112^th Congress.

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There was a cavalcade of Leftist – and media, please pardon the redundancy – politically opportunistic idiocy in response to this weekend’s horrendous Tucson, Arizona murders.  Which were committed unilaterally and without any assistance from anyone by the deranged Jared Loughner.

Never ones to let facts get in the way of a good beating, a great many Progressives grabbed onto the complete lack of any evidence to assign complicit blame for the homicides to Governor Sarah Palin, conservative talk radio, the TEA Party and anyone else right of center of whom they could think.

This is of course just another Left attempt to silence speech they find unhelpful to the advancement of Leftism.  Those who claim that speech with which they disagree leads to violence – aren’t at all comfortable with truly free speech.

The Marxist Media “reformers” at Free Press likewise rushed to not let this crisis go to waste.

I would like to specifically highlight the Twitter work of Free Press’s Campaign Director Tim Karr.  Who jumped on board the blame bandwagon – and the shark – with a series of Tweets aimed at taking advantage of the Arizona body count to advance Free Press’s media “reform” agenda.

Tweet link

An agenda which includes amongst many other terrible ideas the exponential expansion of the government funding of journalism – so as to improve it.  Which is always what happens when you increase the government’s role in something.

The gallant and classy Karr unleashed a flurry of Tweets that connected conservative “haters” to the murders committed by a man none of them had ever met.  And as if that weren’t sufficiently untethered from Reality, Karr also blamed the conservatives’ “media enablers.”  As if the endless reams of evidence of the Leftist media on this and all things just… didn’t exist.

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Saturday morning, a hail of bullets took the lives of five Americans, including a federal judge and a nine year old girl.  19 others were injured, including Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.  For most, Saturday was a day of tragedy – a day of reflection.  Well, Saturday morning, at any rate.  By Saturday afternoon, the left-wing brain trust had shifted into high gear.  By Sunday, every tired, worn out, leftist mouthpiece, from Jane Fonda to MoveOn.org, had shuffled down from their lofty intellectual perches, determined to educate the masses.  Their hypothesis was obvious to anyone smart enough to comprehend it.   Clearly, the Arizona bloodbath was the end result of two years dominated by conservative vitriol, hatred, and “elevated rhetoric.”

It’s an assertion that left wing luminaries have made before, most memorably when New York City Mayor Bloomberg told Katie Couric that the Times Square bomber was probably a white male Tea Partier, likely disenchanted with Obamacare.  He was later forced to eat those words when the would-be terrorist turned out to be a Muslim extremist.  Still, he had exposed a truth: the left has been desperate for a situation that will allow them to hang a crazed killer around the neck of the Tea Party.   With Arizona gunman Jared Loughner, they seem to feel that their ship has finally come in.

In order to make Loughner work as their right-wing poster child, all they have to do is deny reality and ignore their own history.

First of all, the idea of Loughner as the consummate tea-partier is laughable.  The left has always described the Tea Party movement as a collection of under-educated, flag-waving weirdos who ineptly fetishize freedom, American exceptionalism, and the Constitution.  A quick look at the killer’s MySpace and YouTube pages reveals an image of a barely coherent madman, fascinated by flag burning, Mein Kampf, and the Communist Manifesto.  His classmates have described him as “anti-flag” and a “Left-wing Pothead.”  In fact, he was arrested in 2008 on misdemeanor drug charges. Somehow, because he made some vague, rambling statement about the gold standard, we’re supposed to ignore his previous arrest, turn a blind eye to the flag burning, forget about his love of fascist and communist literature, and accept the Loughner-as-conservative fallacy?

Well, yes, apparently we are.  If we don’t, the left will have trouble moving on to the next phase of their plan: controlling political speech in the media.

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There is no proof yet that Christianne Amanpour is a child molester. Let that sink in for a second. Outrageous, right? Especially when simply said out of the blue like that. Yet that is how the media is treating the insanity of the left-wing progressive charge that conservatives, Sarah Palin and the Tea Party are somehow responsible for the actions of a man who had been obsessed with his target since 2007, more than two years before the Tea Party was in existence.

Amanpour, on her low-rated “This Week” program on ABC, said the following in her report of the tragic act of insanity in Arizona when a disturbed gunman open fire, killed six and wounded more than a dozen, including Congresswoman Gabby Giffords. “…But in fact the suspect in custody, 22 year old Jared Loughner, has no known ties to the tea party or any conservative group.”

It was an unprovoked, out of context slam at a group of people who had nothing to do with anything involving this act of barbarism. But it was exactly what most progressive leftists want the story to be – “forget the tragedy, forget the victims, we have to try to use this to our political advantage and blame conservatives.” After all, never let a crisis go to waste, right?

Most old media left-wing attack dog types are only implying it, but some are flat-out saying it. For example, Paul Krugman, about whom there is also no evidence of child molestation yet, blogged that while there wasn’t “yet” any proof, “…it’s long past time for the GOP’s leaders to take a stand against the hate-mongers.” Implicitly this means that the Democrat party is free to not take a stand against anyone using any inflammatory rhetoric because they don’t do that. Makes you wonder if Mr. Krugman has ever heard of Alan Grayson, MSNBC or many of President Obama’s own remarks.

Media Matters for America Senior Fellow (in what can only be described as watching television and complaining about it) Eric Boehlert, about whom there is ten times the evidence of being a child molester than conservatives are responsible for the shooting of Congresswoman Giffords (in case Eric can’t do math, when you multiply by zero you get zero) could not resist the urge to run to Twitter to blame the right, even though his employer managed to. (As of 3:00 am Media Matters website had no mention of the tragedy.) He took the opportunity to attack Andrew Breitbart and Sarah Palin, falling in line with all the other progressive bomb-throwers who seemingly received “Tweeting points” from a central command.  In his rage, which is pretty much a typical day for Mr. Boehlert, he forgot to do one things…condemn the act or offer any condolences or prayers for the victims whatsoever. In fact, he only wrote one tweet with the name Giffords in it, the others that mention her were retweets.

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When Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head and six others were killed Saturday morning by a gunman Jared Loughner, the left wing smear machine went into high gear. Left wing politicians blamed the Tea Party (before the gunman was even named), and left wing hate sites blamed Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh for the shooting, when it was actually done by one of their murderous own. It’s always one of their own.

Loughner’s leftwing high school friend, Caitie Parker, remembers him as a “political radical”: “He was left wing,” she wrote; “As I knew him he was left wing, quite liberal.”

FOX News has reported that the shooter’s favorite books are the Communist Manifesto and Mein Kampf. Loughner is also reportedly an atheist. There’s an anti-bible quote in one of his videos: “Every United States Military recruit at MEPS in Phoenix is receiving one mini bible before the tests. Jared Loughner is a United States Military recruit at MEPS in Phoenix. Therefore, Jared Loughner is receiving one mini bible before the tests.”

Loughner also has a creepy “music video” up on YouTube, in which he is dressed as a terrorist and burns an American flag. FOX News has confirmed that the hooded figure in the video is indeed Loughner.

Also, Congresswoman Giffords is a major Blue Dog Democrat — almost so right wing that she would be considered a conservative in certain areas. She was on almost every important issue essentially a Republican. Her only major left position was support of Obamacare.

But on immigration, she is a blue dog. She supports Second Amendment gun rights and opposed the ban on guns in Washington, D.C. She is also a very strong supporter of border control.

The left hates her. The DailyKos put up a post on January 6, which has now been pulled, saying: “My CongressWOMAN [Gabrielle Giffords] voted against Nancy Pelosi! And is now DEAD to me!”

This shooting is what they teach, this is the poisonous fruit of their indoctrination. Clearly, Loughner is sick, mentally ill — but suckling at the lefty teat is deadly poison for the soul.

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UPDATE: Initial reports said that the Congresswoman had died.

TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) – Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona was shot in the head Saturday when an assailant opened fire outside a grocery store during a meeting with constituents, killing at least five people and wounding several others in a rampage that rattled the nation.

Giffords was among at least 10 people wounded, and the hospital said her outlook was “optimistic” and that she was responding to commands from doctors. The hospital said a 9-year-old child was among the killed, and a U.S. Marshal said a federal judge was also fatally shot in the attack.

Giffords spokesman C.J. Karamargin said an unspecified number of her staff members were injured in the shooting. Congressional officials said an aide to the Democrat was killed, and President Barack Obama said five people died in all. (more…)